


A 20% risk of collision.

by reckonedrightly



Category: Rush (2013)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 07:52:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly/pseuds/reckonedrightly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And then at the end of the night: the kitchen. The light was reddish. Streetlamps. Night time. The dawn couldn't have been far off. Trembling at the edge of the horizon. Those two pretty girls with them."</p><p>1975 and 1970. Pointedly, nothing happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A 20% risk of collision.

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly: oh dear. I feel uneasy posting this and may remove it. This is about the fictionalised representations of James Hunt, Suzy Miller and Niki Lauda as represented in the film Rush, not the real people.
> 
> Secondly: in this fic, men (one in particular) use women to try and work through their own uneasiness regarding their sexuality, their lives and their general self-worth. This is a bad thing to do! I'm really conscious, too, of the fact that it's a common trope in slash fic, where female characters are plot devices and not characters in their own right, which I strongly dislike. This is, however, from the point of view of Rush!James Hunt, who I do not take to be a terrifically feminist thinker. Whether that excuses how I've written this, I don't know; I like Holly, personally, and Suzy, and hope they add something more to the story than 'canvas onto which James projects his issues', but—well, we'll see, won't we?
> 
> Thirdly: this is principally set just after Niki Lauda became World Champion in 1975 and Hesketh went bankrupt, just to clear up what's happening.
> 
> Fourthly: yes, alright, I said it was about the Rush characterisations, but it's actually based around a remark that the real Niki Lauda made about once ending up in James Hunt's flat while they were both in the early stages of their careers, both of them with a girl.
> 
> Fifthly: WARNINGS for discussion of alcoholism, drug use, internalised homophobia.

**1975.**

He can't think of Suzy. The closeness of her is too much; he knows her too well, if not well enough. Suzy has a familiar grip on his—don't say heart—on his—don't say dick though _if there were a camera in front of him_ —Suzy has a familiar grip on him. Yes. His insides do this clench when he thinks of her. A sucking, compressing feeling, like everything in him is being dragged down to a little notch just below his sternum and packed into a tight little ball. _Suzy, Suzy_ : her name oozes through him like sluggish blood. Beating. _Suzy_. The worst thing is that it's in the same place as the feeling he had, seeing her for the first time; kissing her on their wedding day. It's almost similar.

So he can't think of Suzy.

James thinks of racing instead.

It feels worse but it feels a better kind of worse. It makes him hate himself but when he hates himself he hates Suzy less. And when he hates Suzy less he thinks—

But he can't think of Suzy.

* * *

_Fuck_ , though!

That's the first thing James thinks each morning. Fuck! It's more disbelieving than anything. He stares at whatever's in front of his eyes—his bedroom ceiling, sometimes, on good days, the underside of the sink on the days which are, ha-ha-ha, less than superb—and he thinks: fuck! Look at me!

His stomach sinks—each morning—as he realises what his life has come to.

He is meant to be a _driver_.

When everything he swallowed the previous night starts to twinge in his stomach, and when he's gripping tight onto the sides of the sink and sweating as he retches, it feels like the seconds before a race.

* * *

Niki fucking Lauda fucking _bastard_ fucking _rat_ with his World Champion smile, popping open the bottle and champagne bursting into the air. Frozen in a spray. That's the image which is fixed in James' mind. Niki smiling. And looking so restrained about it—smiling, yes, but smiling privately, and probably already thinking about his next training session. His next modification to the fuel tank. His next win.

How did he celebrate? James has seen him drunk before—back in Formula 3—but he'd been drunk too, that time, and there had been a girl, and it had all gotten confused and hazy. They had actually gone back to the same flat. James' flat. Was it? Yeah. He just remembers one glimpse of Niki, raising a glass to his lips, maybe laughing, maybe not. Maybe grimacing. A girl on his arm, too. “If you ever want rescuing from him,” James had told her, winking, and she had laughed. Still, afterwards, she had—well, James can't remember, but he had definitely woken up with only one girl in his bed, so she must have stayed with Niki.

Hard to imagine Niki sleeping with anyone. And James tries for a while. How? He imagines Niki's accent: “I fuck at a 20% risk of pregnancy, no more...”

James would love to hate him.

* * *

—wakes up panting and with the smell of oil and grit in his nostrils; he'd been having a nightmare. In the nightmare he had been coming first. He throws up, sick with adrenaline, his hands slippery on the sides of the sink and his breath sobbing in his chest. If he doesn't get a drive he'll just burn out. If he can't race then he will have to live with himself being nothing more than _himself_ , trapped inside his own body. He doesn't know if he can do that.

* * *

And he can't stop thinking about that night in London, both of them still in F3. Both of them drunk. Both of them with girls. He thinks Niki's girl was called Victoria, or Virginia, V-something. He remembers Niki talking about her, or to her, and the V going slippery in his mouth, turning into a W. _Wic_ toria. Was it?

Maybe it was Janet, actually.

Yeah, it was Janet. He's thinking about—he's thinking about—something. James doesn't know. He was very drunk that night.

* * *

The light comes in too hard, and James doesn't like it. He sits in his dressing gown and watches Suzy move around the kitchen. She's making herself a cup of tea. Toast. James didn't even know they had bread. He's confused by all of this; confused that Suzy can go through these elegant little rituals of ordinary life. Confused that bread is still on sale and—from the noise outside—school children are still yelling and burbling their way home.

He blinks a few times, but it doesn't make anything better.

She looks up once and his heart swoops up painfully when their eyes meet. But it's not love, it's just scared awe, need, and she sighs and looks away quickly. James grits his teeth, suddenly angry that she won't, can't, answer to him when he's like this, and says, “Not going to make one for me, dear?”

“Apparently not, James.”

He's stopped short by that. If only she had made some excuse or insult— _I didn't know you were on non-alcoholic fluids these days, James_ —he knows she can say that sort of thing sometimes—if only she had done that, he would have known what to say.

But she hasn't, he doesn't, and while he's silent, she leaves.

* * *

Being without a drive, being still, hurts. And every day brings another closed door; another team scared off by the drinking, the dope, the—everything. By James. Don't they understand that this is the only way he can win? Don't they understand that this is part of winning?

“My reputation? My _reputation_ is as a damn good driver,” he barks over the phone.

“Your reputation is many things, James.”

“Tell them their car's a piece of shit,” James says, and hangs up, angry because it's the sort of thing Lauda would say, _their car's a piece of shit_ —superior and brusque. Except Niki would only say it if it were true.

* * *

Victory!

That was what Niki had said. Not Victoria, but the word victory—turning slippery at the back of his mouth, clipped and sleek and German—well, Austrian— _wic_ tory—and then there was something else. There must have been, because James can feel the moment like a dull ache. There's an echo of something more than just the Kraut accent and a few very drunk people in a very small kitchen which had belonged to one of James' friends.

No, no, it had been James' kitchen, not—

He doesn't know. There's just—the smell of beer on Niki's breath. Right, yes. James had been surprised at him. Drinking. Like a real human being. Well done, Niki. Had he said that? Well done, Niki. Nice to see you having a good time. Yes, he had, and he had meant it, and Niki—James thinks—wasn't sure whether he was serious or not, and opted to take it as sarcasm. So he called James an asshole. And James shrugged and bought him another drink. And didn't mind. Niki didn't mind either. Neither of them minded. That's James' recollection, anyway.

And then at the end of the night: the kitchen. The light was reddish. Streetlamps. Night time. The dawn couldn't have been far off. Trembling at the edge of the horizon. Those two pretty girls with them. 

The echo sounds again. It's unpleasant. A cold drop down the back of his neck. But he can't come up with what it's an echo _of_. All he's got is the four of them, James and Niki and the two girls (possibly Janet, and maybe Beth) standing in James' kitchen, drinking, and Niki being close and saying something about victory. Sour breath tickling on James' lower lip. There is something oily and bright about the feeling, the taste of the memory. A single inky drop of emotion which diffused quickly, stained everything, but for one heartbeat was preserved, rounded: pristine.

* * *

He can't think of Suzy, not when she's everywhere and nowhere. He doesn't want to believe that she's slipping away from him, but he's not an idiot. His marriage, right now, is something like that moment when he can feel he's about to spin off the track, can feel he's gone too far—the weightless heartbeat before the sky begins to shatter and the tires shriek, everything shrieks, and he's out of the race once more. Hunt the Shunt. Everyone knows what he's like. Everyone knows his reputation.

James remembers leaning in to that girl, Janet, remembers her curly hair brushing his cheek, remembers how her lips were pink and parted, and he said, “If you ever need rescuing from him...” But no one ever needs rescuing from Niki, not really; Niki only drives at a 20% risk.

* * *

James' head hurts, his chest hurts, he hurts, and he's hard without wanting it, thrusting against his own hand, hips up but face in his pillows. There is the reek of alcohol and sweat, and too long on unwashed sheets. He can't think of Suzy.

The night in London, with Niki, with the two girls, in the kitchen, there was light coming in reddish and uneasy from the orange streetlamp just outside, and that beer tang on Niki's breath. That night in London, what had Niki _said_ about victory?

(He had started off thinking about the girl that night, whose name was probably Beth, and who had red hair—red down between her legs, too, he thinks, and _lovely_. But his thoughts had stumbled over themselves and he had, honestly, never been much for Beth in the first place.)

He thinks he remembers tasting the beer on Niki's breath, not smelling it. Their mouths didn't—touch or anything, of course, but Niki's whispering breath— _victory_ —had passed over his lips, and James had—yeah. It had been disgusting, really. The air had been sweating alcohol. Tangerine light. Outside: cars. (He's rolling his hips, kicking against the mattress, making springs complain—he feels terrible, like his skin's too thin, and he's hypersensitive but not, really, anything close to aroused, no matter what his body is telling him, no matter that his cock is heavy, hard in his hand.) Cars, of course—bloody cars—the carousing of horns. “Victory.”

In what? Had they been talking about racing? That would be typical of Niki—and, admittedly, of James as well. Standing with two delightful girls in James' kitchen and having some kind of argument about engines. James is the wilder driver, but he's still a driver, and Niki is—well, so frequently wrong about things which he just can't let go.

But James doesn't think it was that.

How close do you have to stand to someone, anyway, to breathe into their mouth? What had Niki been doing, slavering on him like that? What point had he been trying to make? Any closer and they would have—right in front of the girls—

James' breath comes in noisy gulps and he pushes his face harder into the pillow, hand wet with his own come.

* * *

It's basically an exercise in disgusted self-hate. And that's fairly understandable.

Admittedly, he didn't expect it to take this form.

He always tries to steer away from it. He always starts with some girl, real or imagined—sometimes multiple. At first, it only happens when he's getting himself off, but later, breathing into the soft, sweat-damp neck of a woman named Holly, her thighs clamped about his hips, his hands spread out on her ribs—fragile, tiny thing, the frame of her all spiky and delicate—he is aware of her, yes, but in the back of his mind: orange light, “victory”, Niki's breath in his mouth.

And what would have happened, really, if Niki had—just a little—leant forwards? Or, for that matter, if James had done the same?

Holly's hair is spread out on the pillow in a tangle of black curls. Her ankles are crossed at the small of his back. Under him, she is shuddering, pitching, rolling—lovely, lovely, he _can't_ thank her enough but this feels like something he's doing for the cameras.

So if—if Niki had leant forwards—

A hot mouth, the scratch of stubble (he kisses Holly, mouth open and wet, to try and scratch out that thought but now that it's crossed his mind he'll never forget it). But after that?

—that's about when he comes.

And there's a brief break in his thoughts where he has to show Holly out, tell her she's gorgeous, and suffer the hard stare of her deep black eyes when she says, “You're married, aren't you?”

He smiles, and says, “Intermittently.”

“That's what I thought.”

“Can you smell it on me?”

“I think I read it in the newspapers, actually.”

“You think?”

“I don't really follow sports.”

“Just sportsmen.”

She raises her eyebrows, and James offers an apologetic inclination of the head as he opens the door, flashing a rueful smile. Too far, perhaps. Normally, he'd like to see her again, but now he's unsure; he's more comfortable with people who can be readily insulted. Preferably, they come back with teeth of their own, not sombre, cool, faintly pitying stares.

He's not an idiot. He knows where that's come from, and who it applies to.

Holly leaves. James stays in the doorway watching her narrow shoulders as she vanishes back into the city, and wonders what it would be like to deserve someone like her.

* * *

People who come back with teeth of their own. Well, Suzy's one, no doubt about that. And yet he's managed to make her miserable.

When you are as bad as this—and James, drinking from the bottle, still with the smell of Holly's perfume smeared on him—it's a relief to know someone who will never be wrecked by you.

Niki drives at 20% risk.

* * *

But after that? After, that is, the kiss which never happened?

James doesn't know. What would the girls have said? Well, they were drunk too; perhaps they would have laughed. And then—and then it doesn't really work, of course. They would never have left them alone. And James thinks that the _what next_ would have worked better alone. With Niki, that is. Alone with Niki. 

But it's not happening. So he can gloss over the facts, and imagine—James' bedroom, the door locked, the reddish light still coming in through the window and the traffic still rumbling. The world, in short, still happening. And their mouths—together.

When James thinks about it, it's just hands. No funny business. Both of them with their hands on the other's cock. Gritted teeth. Hard breaths, pushing—shoving—against each other. In the dark. And the tang of beer. Would they kiss more than once? No. The kiss would just be a way to start it. After that they would push their foreheads together, shove their faces into shoulder-crooks. Eyes not meeting. Niki's fingers would be insistent, rhythmic; James clumsy, enthusiastic, gripping tight at Niki's hip. Niki would brace a hand against the wall. Only touch James where he had to. And—mouth wet, mouth open—James would gasp, would try not shout, but Niki would mutter in German. A trembling chant James couldn't understand, shuddering upwards and downwards in pitch. Like the splutter of a car.

Afterwards, Niki would say something like, “There. You finally came first.”

James hates this idea, but he has to admit it would be funny. And with no car, no drive, no way to speed away from himself—it's nice to laugh.

**1970.**

“You know, if you ever need rescuing from him,” James says, and raises his eyebrows as an end to that sentence, leaning in a little to Niki's girl—Janet, he thinks her name is. She's tall and slow-smiling, but flushed with alcohol all the same; has been coming, very charmingly, out of her shell over the course of the evening. Beside him, Beth—who has no shell to speak of, in an utterly delightful way—laughs and knocks him playfully on the shoulder, and he grins and tugs her closer.

When he looks back at Niki, Niki's looking at him.

They're all standing close, really; in a tight circle. The streetlamp light hangs over them all, like a greasy film of orange dust. Niki is grinning. “What,” James says, grinning back.

“'If',” Niki says. “You only consider it a possibility. I could consider that a victory.”

“Do you?”

“I said I _could_. Not that I do.”

“So you don't.”

“No. Learn to listen.”

“What is a—a personal victory, then, for the great Niki Lauda—terror of the F3 circuit?” James is laughing. Drunk. The whole room, actually, is shaken with laughter. Only Niki is not chuckling, though his lips are curled in a smile. “Professional unknown.”

“A victory.”

“Yes. Off the racetrack. Do you have them?”

“Maybe—her needing a rescue from you.” He nods to Beth, to James. James yanks her tighter. He likes having an armful of her, he has to say. It's a nice feeling.

“You _are_ popular, old girl,” he tells her warmly, while she's looking up at him and grinning. He kisses the top of her head, and looks to Niki. Startled by how close they are. He can taste Niki's sour breath tickling his lower lip. Beer and, good Lord, cigarettes; he _has_ been misbehaving. “What happens if I need someone to pry me from her clutches?”

Niki looks at him for a moment. James looks back. A moment too late, James laughs. Niki, though, just smiles, and looks to Janet with a kind of businesslike assessment in his eyes, smile fading slightly. After a moment, he nods at her—complete madman, honestly, expression on his face like he's judging a new car—then he moves towards the door which leads away from the kitchen. To James' bedroom, the little rat, with dear, pretty Janet in tow.

James doesn't say anything, though. He's too busy being impressed by his balls, and vaguely curious about what that silence meant. But then Beth's hand brushes his hip, and he finds himself glad to put it out of his mind.


End file.
